Greatest Ballets of the World

This four-DVD collection of ballets is a mixed bag—not because of the works (Tchaikovsky's three masterpieces Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and Prokofiev's spikier Romeo and Juliet are certainly all excellent ballets) but because of the performances, which are so stylistically varied that they seem to come from different worlds. The most traditional is The Sleeping Beauty from Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, conducted with spirit by Viktor Fedotov and featuring some of the company's finest principals (with the original choreography revised by Konstantin Sergeyev and Oleg Vinogradov), followed by Natalia Makarova's Swan Lake from the London Festival Ballet (with the Danish Radio Symphony well conducted by Graham Bond, and the ethereally thin Evelyn Hart cutting a striking figure in the lead), a mostly old-fashioned rendition, though it employs visual projections that some may find intrusive. Angelin Preljocaj's modernistic take on Romeo and Juliet, however, looks in many respects like a ballet version of West Side Story, although it remains impressive thanks to Kent Nagano's inspired conducting of the Lyon Opera Orchestra (though only about half of Prokofiev's score is utilized), and the flair that Pascale Doye and Nicolas Dufloux display as the leads (though the way they toss one another about like rag dolls in the final scene becomes a bit unnerving). Then there's Maurice B(jart's The Nutcracker from the Th((tre Musical de Paris-Ch(telet, which uses the Tchaikovsky score but adds popular French tunes (played by a strolling accordionist) and junks the original plot in favor of an autobiographical narrative involving B(jart's own dance training and relationship to his mother. The result is so strange that when the staging reverts to the traditional for the pas de deux, it's like stepping into a completely different universe—the one, in fact, inhabited by the Kirov's Sleeping Beauty. Boasting good sound (with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo options on the Tchaikovsky discs) and solid camerawork throughout, the sole DVD extra here is a “behind the scenes” featurette on The Nutcracker. Buy the set for the savings, but the titles can all be circulated individually. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)